Blackout Delays OpenSuse Beta

A power outage that hit some vital servers at Novell a few days ago has also caused the release of the third Beta version of OpenSuse 11.1 to be postponed.

In an e-mail on the OpenSuse announcement list, Community Manager Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier said the release date has been pushed back “by several days”. The reason: during the outage, no new packages could be checked in.

Originally scheduled for Oct 16, release of the new test version of the distribution is now more likely to be Oct 20.

The openSUSE project warns owners of systems containing the Intel e1000e gigabit Ethernet card against using the actual Beta 1 of openSUSE 11.1 instead of the Linux kernel version. The Linux version can permanently damage the card.

Developer Stefan Dirsch is responsible for maintaining the openSUSE build scripts of the fglrx driver. In a message on the openSUSE developer mailing list, he appeals for a successor to take over the maintenance.